by Alyssa Gorton | Nov 17, 2023 | Black Portrait Photograph Collection, Texas, Theorizing the archive, Theory & Practice
Left: Portrait of two women standing and two men seated, cabinet photograph, c. 1880-1910s, UD Library: Black Portrait Photograph CollectionRight: Portrait, possibly Fannie Williams and Ellen, c. 1880-1910s, UD Library: Black Portrait Photograph Collection The second...
by Lyric Lott | Nov 13, 2023 | Black Portrait Photograph Collection, Texas, Theorizing the archive, Uncategorized
The bright flash of a light bulb, the chafe of a stiff collar, the quiet clink of glass plates. What would the sitters of this portrait photograph have seen, felt, heard, and smelt when this photo was taken? A few weeks ago, I found myself walking down the...
by Lyric Lott | Nov 10, 2023 | Black Portrait Photograph Collection, Unknown Location
Men’s, women’s, boys’, and girls’. Anyone who has ever shopped at a clothing store is familiar with the typical categories these shops contain, with aisles clearly demarcating the different sections like traffic-filled streets on a city street plan. Yet how many of us...
by Hannah Grantham | Nov 8, 2023 | Black Portrait Photograph Collection, Texas, Uncategorized, Unknown Location
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library. “Mrs. Annie Albrittan, who does washing in her home in Woodville, Greene County, Georgia, November 1941.” The...
by Hannah Grantham | Nov 8, 2023 | Black Portrait Photograph Collection, Texas, Uncategorized
Albumen photographic print mounted onto a cabinet card created at W.J. Cassaday’s photography studio in Waco, Texas. This is a story of Franklin C. Wilkerson (1897-1964) of Waco, Texas. What follows is an attempt to give a name to a boy found in the archive and...
by Jamie Clifford | Nov 8, 2023 | Black Portrait Photograph Collection, Texas
Recto: a photograph of a baby — chubby limbs not quite still for his portrait, gaze curious but unfocused — nestled in a fur rug atop a rattan chair. Verso: “Cecil Allen” scrawled in pencil. Beneath it, possibly written in a different hand: “Dead.” Who was Cecil...
